History and theory of literary genres

Although there is an influential strand of modern theory of fiction that distinguishes “fictivity” from "fictionality", it continues to be a common sense belief, even among literary critics, that obvious falsehood of what is represented makes a text fictional or at least contributes to its fictionality. Taking the starting point of the tension between this belief and Truman Capote's controversial genre concept of 'nonfiction novel', which is frequently instantiated as crime novels, this paper addresses the questions of how many facts fiction can 'bear' and whether, in principle, there is incompatibility between certain narrative techniques (e.g. internal focalization) on the one hand and the status of a text as factual on the other. Through investigating a classical example of the 'nonfiction novel' (Capote's “In Cold Blood”), a modern precursor (Alfred Döblin's “Die beiden Freundinnen und ihr Giftmord”) and a related contemporary work (Ferdinand von Schirach's “Verbrechen”) with regard to the authors' intentions, signposts of factuality/fictionality and their reception, this paper points out the potential and the risks involved when literature appropriates real legal cases.

SYNOPSIS Literary Dystopia and Attempts to Define It in the International and Czech Contexts This article deals with anti-utopian and dystopian literature, development of the genre and attempts at its definition. The first part contains a description of attributes characteristic of the genre: newspeak, the petrified world, and the division of the world into two fields (Us vs. Them). The author then devotes attention to previous theoretical definitions of dystopia and anti-utopia, including an historical mapping of research in foreign, mainly English studies: works by George Woodcock, Fred Polak, Mark Hillegas, Krishan Kumar, Lyman Tower Sargent and others. The survey of research in the Czech academic field is based on texts by Milada Genčiová, Daniela Hodrová and Petr Hrtánek. In conclusion, the author describes the differences between anti-utopia and dystopia, their delimitation as specific genres, proceeding primarily from the theory of petrified worlds. She also stressess the imp...

Warum dichten Menschen als einzige uns bekannte Lebewesen? Und zu welchem Zweck tun sie dies, müssen sie es vielleicht sogar tun? Und wie wird aus Nichtkunst eigentlich Dichtkunst? Gibt es etwa grundlegende, poetogene Strukturen, die Poesie bedingen und gar erzwingen?
Die Beiträge des vorliegenden Bandes behandeln solche und ähnliche Fragen aus kulturwissenschaftlicher und biopoetischer Sicht und beschreiten damit insgesamt Wege zu einer empirischen Anthropologie der Literatur.

Studying fanfiction in a field called “fan studies” conveys the assumption that we study it primarily to learn about fans. But what of fanfiction from a textual perspective—its distinctive recombinatory, iterative, and unstable textual effects and pleasures? How can it be defined and understood from literary historical and theoretical perspectives, or as a distinctive literary mode in its own right? Though it does seem refer to a recognizable kind of text, “fanfiction” resists a single definition but rather indicates an often playful relation nonetheless ordered by power dynamics—between source and text, writer and text, law, profit, platform or code and text, etc. Arguing through cephalopods and theorists influential in assemblage and network theory (Deleuze, Kittler), this chapter claims that “fanfiction” challenges models of unitary authorship and artistic hierarchies derived from Kant even as it relies on these models both conceptually and historically for the conditions of its existence

Genre has been for centuries a familiar concept in literature, and its main role has been perceived to be that of a classification device. Based on certain clusters of criteria, literary works have been grouped into different categories, each group diverse from the others due to its generic structure.
The conventional definitions of genre, formulated on the basis of certain structural characteristics of different works, have been of categories with "particular form, content, technique, or the like" (The Oxford English Dictionary), and not much more.

In the past five or six decades, though, the research on genre and generic structures has established that there is a clear relationship between generic structures and the context of situation, and that certain features of a text allow the readers to anticipate the content of a passage, something that has a positive effect on text comprehension. More research has shown that, far from simple classification devices, genres are interactional and communicational devices, bearers of discourse meaning, and encoders of social action.

Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and it has become a dominant literary form in recent years. Because the main character is named after a real person, some people wrongly assume that biofiction is a form of biography, an attempt to accurately represent the life of a person from the past. But this is not correct. Biofiction is fiction, not biography, and as such, authors find something of value in the story of their subject, and then they fictionalize that story in order to make sense of life more generally. In other words, authors frequently take fictional liberties with the historical and biographical facts in order to give readers their own visions of life and the world. What is it in the lives of Frederick and Anna Douglass, Serena Williams, Galileo, or Friedrich Nietzsche that is so relevant and meaningful for us today? That is the kind of question we will answer through fictions and films about important historical figures. In this course we will specifically examine social justice biofiction, which is literature that fictionalizes the life of an actual person in order to promote and advance justice for people and groups that have been marginalized and oppressed. There has been very little scholarship about the nature of the biographical novel, so this is a great opportunity for you, as you can be one of the first to create a system of knowledge to make sense of this aesthetic form, and that is what we will do during the course of this semester. Students will write two papers and take two exams.

Short prose was the form Kafka favoured for many of his most important works. It was also the medium of much innovatory Modernist writing in the period 1900-33. The essays in this volume investigate Kafka’s short prose in relation to that written by his contemporaries (including Nietzsche, Robert Walser, Döblin, Benn, Musil, Broch), thus helping to locate Kafka more precisely within the literary context of his time.

L'ouvrage est consacré à Charles Nodier, protagoniste du premier romantisme français et de la linguistique des origines, et analyse la dominante métalinguistique et métalittéraire de son œuvre. Une même pratique s’impose chez le linguiste et l’homme de lettres : celle de la réflexion sur le matériau qui est le sien, qu’il s’agisse de la création littéraire, du livre, de la langue, ou encore du dictionnaire. Le linguiste est à la fois penseur du langage fantasque et lexicographe hardi qui crée, dérange, expérimente à partir de l'examen critique des méthodes de son temps. Il en est de même chez l’écrivain, dont l’œuvre semble moins créer un monde fictif qu’un univers littéraire, qui sans cesse détourne le lecteur de la fiction pour attirer son attention sur l’écriture.

Contributions de : Patrick Berthier, Valentina Bisconti, Jacques Remi Dahan, Marc Decimo, Marie-Françoise Melmoux-Montaubin, Caroline Raulet-Marcel, Chirstophe Rey, Luc Ruiz, Jacques-Philippe Saint-Gérand, Daniel Sangsue, Marta Sukiennicka, Virginie Tellier, Roselyne de Villeneuve, Georges Zaragoza.

Im deutschen Roman um 1700 prägen weibliche Hauptfiguren ein galantes Erzählen, das in einer Textform stattfindet, die erst im 18. Jahrhundert zur ‚literarischen Gattung' avanciert. Die Studie analysiert erstmals Konstruktionsprinzipien galanter Weiblichkeit im Roman (1690–1720) und beschreibt deren Spezifik im Hinblick auf Gattungs-und Genderfragen unter poetischen, sozialen und ökonomischen Aspekten der Buch-und Medienlandschaft um 1700.

Il problema della classificazione dei generi letterarî greci, com'è noto, è assai complesso, e non sarà oggetto specifico di discussione in questa sede 2 . Tratteremo, invece, un caso particolare che a esso si ricollega e che ha da sempre diviso le opinioni degli studiosi che si sono trovati, chi in un modo chi in un altro, a dover affrontare i vv. 411-452 della Teogonia di Esiodo. In tal occasione il poeta descrive i poteri della dea Ecate 3 .

Le roman de moeurs oppose une résistance à l ’étude de sa généricité en raison de la difficulté à penser ensemble les critères historiques et formels qui peuvent le définir. Sa lecture croisée avec l ’étude de moeurs développée par la littérature panoramique des années 1830-1840 rappelle la nécessité d’une approche contextuelle faisant la part belle aux supports, aux dispositifs éditoriaux et aux visées cognitives des textes, qui procèdent bien souvent d’un même projet d’écriture mêlant sociographie et fiction.

This article deals with anti-utopian and dystopian literature, development of the genre and attempts at its definition. The first part contains a description of attributes characteristic of the genre: newspeak, the petrified world, and the division of the world into two fields (Us vs. Them). The author then devotes attention to previous theoretical definitions of dystopia and anti-utopia, including an historical mapping of research in foreign, mainly English studies: works by George Woodcock, Fred Polak, Mark Hillegas, Krishan Kumar, Lyman Tower Sargent and others. The survey of research in the Czech academic field is based on texts by Milada Genčiová, Daniela Hodrová and Petr Hrtánek. In conclusion, the author describes the differences between anti-utopia and dystopia, their delimitation as specific genres, proceeding primarily from the theory of petrified worlds. She also stressess the importance of a political reading of the dystopian and anti-utopian literature based on the close relation between the real world and fiction in this genre.

This essay tries to map out place of Experimentations  introduced by P S Rege in modern Marathi lyrical poetry. Unexplored genre conventions, which mainly focused on 'print' and 'private' mode of poetic communication is the prime area of these experiments. Texts, on the one hand tries to deal with newly introduced notions of modern poetic discourse and on the other hand incorporates various Spech Genre of everyday Life in poetry. The essay signifies the importance of concept of experimentation not only in terms of style and form, but also with changing themes and visions.

Recognized as the first medieval instances of the romance genre, the Roman de Thebes, Roman d'Enéas, Roman de Brut and Roman de Troie (ca. 1150-1165) are based on the
rewriting of Latin texts deeply rooted in history. Yet few studies have explored the relationship between these romans d’antiquité and medieval historiography, as a literary genre (estoire and historia). There has indeed been a tendency amongst critics to focus on a thematic
analysis of the links between the “first romances” and history, at the expense of a more generic approach. Our task, therefore, is to show that this corpus can be defined by its conscious – and subversive – relationship with medieval historiography. By combining the Jaussian approach of the theory of genres with manuscript analysis, we shall first establish that the medieval readers interpreted romans d’antiquité not only as romance, but also as works of historiography. This double interpretation, confirmed on various accounts by the manuscripts, will then be explained by a poetic structure that playfully blurs the line between generic distinctions. Hence it will appear that the “first novelist” deliberately use the conventions of historiography in order to lay the foundation of a genre that will maintain a close, yet complicated, relationship with history.

Este trabalho trata da obra de Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (1902-1982) como crítico literário e historiador da literatura, com ênfase em três momentos específicos de seu percurso intelectual. O primeiro é o de sua crítica literária profissional publicada nos rodapés de jornais brasileiros, concentrada na década de 1940 e início da década de 1950, na qual apresenta ao publico brasileiro a corrente norte-americana de interpretação literária conhecida como new criticism, e introduz o uso de algumas de suas questões técnicas na análise de autores como Manuel Bandeira e João Cabral de Melo Neto. Em um segundo momento, procura-se compreender o processo de constituição do texto de sua história da literatura brasileira, publicada postumamente sob o titulo de Capítulos de Literatura Colonial (1991), mas concebida na primeira metade dos anos 1950. A escrita da obra deu-se em grande medida no período em que o historiador viveu na Itália (1952-1954), trabalhando como professor na Università di Roma, experiência que foi fundamental na produção do livro, tanto no que diz respeito à incorporação de debates do panorama intelectual de época (como, por exemplo, na interlocução com o crítico italiano Mario Praz), quanto na introdução de fontes pouco conhecidas na interpretação da literatura brasileira, em particular do Arcadismo. Por fim, no terceiro momento, analisaremos a unidade da produção do autor nos anos 1950, que representa uma evolução considerável de seu pensamento desde sua obra de estréia Raízes do Brasil, com enfoque no entrelaçamento entre Capítulos de Literatura Colonial e Visão do Paraíso, na medida em que comporiam o projeto mais amplo da A Era do Barroco no Brasil – Cultura e Vida Espiritual nos Séculos XVII e XVIII, obra que nunca chegou a concretizar. De um modo geral, se poderá observar que a crítica literária cumpriu um papel indispensável no desenvolvimento de um estilo peculiar de interpretação da história brasileira capaz de compreender a consciência histórica dos agentes, em diversos níveis, da conjuntura ao quotidiano mais prosaico dos homens comuns.

Παρουσιάζεται η αυτοβιογραφία της ζακυνθινής λογίας Ελισάβετ Μουτζάν-Μαρτινέγκου. Αρχικά επισημαίνεται συνοπτικά η θέση των γυναικών και της γυναικείας γραφής στην Ευρώπη του 18ου και του 19ου αιώνα. Σημειώνεται ότι στον ελληνικό χώρο εμφανίζεται ένας περιορισμένος αριθμός λογίων γυναικών, οι οποίες, κατά τις πρώτες δεκαετίες του 19ου αιώνα, άμεσα επηρεασμένες από τα διδάγματα του Διαφωτισμού, υπηρέτησαν τον στόχο της εθνικής αναγέννησης και της ηθικής – πολιτισμικής διάπλασης των γυναικών δημοσιεύοντας λογοτεχνικά κείμενα, θεατρικά έργα, δοκίμια και μεταφράσεις.

Regarded as the high point of Chilean writer Roberto Bolaños (1953-2003) oeuvre, the novel 2666, published posthumously in 2004, is divided in five disharmoniously connected parts. In this thesis, I argue that 2666 assimilates different literary genres such as the American realist novel, crime fiction in more that one variant, and finally the bildungsroman. The first part of the thesis is dedicated to a close reading of the novel, analyzing its structure, the narrators modulation and Bolaño's stylistic changes in each section, in order to understand how such genres are assimilated. The authors main themes the link between ethic and aesthetic, art and violence are reached through formal analysis, in a constant dialog with other works that belong to genres which Bolaño tries to assimilate. By approaching 2666 this way, many questions are raised regarding two main issues: what sort of novel is 2666? And what does it represent to the literary writing in early 21st century? The book is often classified as encyclopedic and maximalist, and placed side by side with other long American novels; I disagree with those labels, and seek to show how limited they are, reflecting upon the way 2666 rejects common categorical interpretations. Based on connections the novel itself suggests, I establish a link between 2666 and modernist novels that deal with the concept of a total novel. I propose then a diachronic reading that claims that Bolaño recovers what is still possible from the modernist ideology, which gains new meaning in his own poetics, inseparable from the specters of failed utopias, the crisis of humanism, and the ubiquity of late capitalism in all its violence. The connection between 2666 and high modernism, however, is not stable or simple. It is through its gaps, leftovers, excess and disharmony that I develop the concept of a monstrous novel that assimilates other genres and exposes contradictions intrinsical to contemporary poetics.

This paper organizes traditional and modern literary standards and values into objective assessment matrices to establish frameworks for examining contemporary masterpiece poetry within the contexts of the changing roles of literary consumers as well as those of arbiters of literary taste.

Nel prendere in analisi le fonti giudiziarie si deve partire dall’assunto per il quale, in primo luogo, la verità giudiziaria non collimi con la verità storica. Gli atti penali sono predisposti per poter accertare le responsabilità di soggetti di fronte a determinati reati e la natura delle fonti è correlata alla decisione che il giudice dovrà prendere per comminare la relativa pena. Ciò nonostante è indubbio che, dalle carte conservate, si possano estrapolare i contesti e le mentalità di una determinata epoca. Volendo affrontare la storia dell'Italia repubblicana i procedimenti penali rispecchiano i labili confini tra criminalità e politica, diventando strumento di governo dei fenomeni sociali e economici. Il seguente studio prende in analisi il processo conservato presso l'Archivio di Stato di Bologna inerente Leonarda Cianciulli e celebrato nel 1946.

Convegno internazionale “Elegy and Iambus: History and Challenge of Two Poetic Genres” – “Elegia e giambo: storia e sfide di due generi poetici”,  25-27 maggio 2022.
Università degli Studi dell'Aquila, Dipartimento di Scienze Umane – Dipartimento di Eccellenza
Università degli Studi “G. d'Annunzio” Chieti - Pescara, Dipartimento di Lettere, Arti e Scienze Sociali


25/05/2022

I parte

Università degli Studi dell'Aquila, Dipartimento di Scienze Umane – Aula 3A
Link alla videoconferenza interattiva: https://univaq.webex.com/meet/conferenze
Link alla diretta streaming: https://www.univaq.it/live

I sessione, ore 14:00-16:20

Presiede Jan Kwapisz (University of Warsaw)

14:00-14:20
Saluti istituzionali e apertura dei lavori.

14:20-15:00
Lucia Athanassaki (University of Crete), “Picturing performance settings and celebratory occasions in the elegies of Archilochus, Solon, Theognis, and the Theognidea”

15:00-15:40
Ewen Bowie (Corpus Christi College, Oxford University), “Anacreon in the Theognidea?”

15:40-16:20
Vanessa Cazzato (CNRS – ANHIMA Anthropologie et Histoire des Mondes Antiques), “Sense and Reference in Hipponax”

Pausa caffè, ore16:20-16:50

II sessione, ore 16:50-18:30

Presiede Jan Kwapisz (University of Warsaw)

16:50-17:30
Krystyna Bartol (Adam Mickiewicz University), “Early Greek elegy and epigram: a creative confrontation of genres”

17:30-18:10
Silvia Barbantani (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore), “Biografie di città e di re: evoluzione di un ‘genere’ poetico, tra epica ed elegia”

18:10-18:30
Dibattito finale e chiusura della prima giornata.

26/05/2022

Trasferimento e visita di Sulmona e del Museo archeologico di Chieti: sguardi sul patrimonio culturale abruzzese e intrecci con le antiche cività letterarie greca e latina.

27/05/2022

II parte
Università degli Studi “G. d'Annunzio” Chieti - Pescara, Dipartimento di Lettere, Arti e Scienze Sociali, Auditorium del Rettorato
Link alla videoconferenza interattiva: https://unich.webex.com/meet/EleqyAndL.ambus.HistoryAndChallengeOfTwoLiteraryGenres

III sessione, ore 09:30-10:50

Presiede Luigi Bravi (Università degli Studi “G. d'Annunzio” Chieti - Pescara)

09:30-10:10
Enrico Magnelli (Università degli Studi di Firenze), “Ancora sul problema dell'inno elegiaco (tra Callimaco, Simonide e gli Inni omerici)”

10:10-10:50
Luca Bettarini (Sapienza Università di Roma), “Un frammento della coliambografia ellenistica: il cosiddetto ‘epitafio di Linceo’”

Pausa caffè, 10:50-11:10

IV sessione, ore 11:10-13:30
Presiede Luigi Bravi (Università degli Studi “G. d'Annunzio” Chieti - Pescara)

11:10-11:50
Marialuigia Di Marzio (Università degli Studi “G. d'Annunzio” Chieti - Pescara), “Pausania e i piccoli auleti”

11:50-12:30
Laura Lulli (Università degli Studi dell'Aquila), “L' 'elegia del tatuaggio' tra la poetica dell'incrocio tra i generi e la ridefinizione del genere”. 

12:30-13:30
Tavola rotonda finale coordinata da Carmine Catenacci (Università degli Studi “G. d'Annunzio” Chieti - Pescara) e Livio Sbardella (Università degli Studi dell'Aquila).

The present paper proposes a new periodization model for the history of Byzantine literature between the 11th and the 15th century. The paper examines first the use of the historical model in the periodization schemata of various overviews of Byzantine literature along with the essentialist and teleological concepts inherent in this model. Two further sections present the arguments concerning the insignificance of 1204 and 1453 for a literary history of Byzantium because both dates did not leave a visible imprint on the way people wrote after the disasters had occured, while their presence as historical markers of an abrupt end obscures the continuities and the important changes that took place around them. In two last sections the paper offers two new boundaries that are not instantaneous moments in history but fluid and broad segments of time in its unbroken stream. The years around 1050 and 1350 are marked by a series of changes in the way logoi were perceived both in school and in actual practice, and it is, therefore, proposed that Byzantine literature from the eleventh century onwards is shaped by two fluid periods: 1050-1350 and 1350-1500.

Разум не удовлетворяется тогда, когда он не может прийти в движение, исходя из общепринятого любым разумом понятия. В настоящее время почти общепризнана расплывчатость границ литературоведения. Многие исследователи даже предпочитают говорить не о филологии, а о гуманитарном знании вообще, что вполне законно, если говорить о герменевтическом знании, но что прежде всего означает размывание позиции исследователя как относящегося и к тексту, и к используемому методу. Это сочетается с переходом литературоведения от ориентации на автора (изучение метра и ритма, жанра, стиля, композиции -то есть исходя из изначальной интуиции поэтики автора) к ориентации на читателя (в диапазоне от рецептивного до функционального подхода). Верно, ибо как что в литературе возникало, можно понять только исходя из того, как произведение ориентировалось на какую аудиторию, и какую аудиторию оно создавало, но такое понимание может опираться только на рассмотрение внутреннего топоса самого произведения. Необходимо назвать самые начала явления литературы, определяющие его границы, то есть основания отличения литературы как системы от нелитературы.

Literary Studies of contemporary works of literature, in the absence of a canon, are to a high degree directed by order-making umbrella terms. Using the umbrella term “new realism” as example the study examines (1) its relationship with poetological discourses as well as discourses of a diagnosis of the present, (2) how the umbrella term’s attractiveness corresponds to its conceptual underdetermination, and (3) which different forms text analytical concepts of “new realism” can take.

This History provides a concise overview of the developments of British poetry from the Anglo-Saxon period to the present day. The volume brings together experts in the field and offers a series of introductions to key poetic genres, poetic conventions and recent debates. The 31 chapters trace major developments in the history of British poetry, featuring poets such as Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, William Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, William Wordsworth, Philip Larkin, Seamus Heaney, Carol Ann Duffy, David Dabydeen, and many more. Instead of presenting a ‘comprehensive’ survey of British poetry, this History provides in-depth analyses of selected poems, linking them to the multiple cultural, social and aesthetic contexts of their time. In addition to presenting an array of theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of poetry, each chapter assesses crucial generic changes and aesthetic concerns that had an impact on processes of production, distribution, and reception of poetry. As such, the handbook offers an essential guide to both teachers and students, to specialists and non-specialists of poetry alike.